


Some Things Change

by failsafe



Category: Leverage
Genre: Atmospheric, Case Fic, Friendship/Love, Multi, Slice of Life, Southern Gothic, Unresolved Romantic Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-30
Updated: 2017-04-30
Packaged: 2018-10-25 13:41:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10765383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/failsafe/pseuds/failsafe
Summary: An excerpt-of-an-episode-like case-fic. Hardison is unhappy with the scenery. Eliot notices some thematic elements. Parker is Parker.





	Some Things Change

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sheeana](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sheeana/gifts).



> I really hope you enjoy this. I was trying to give a sense of grounding and like progression that's happening in their emotional perceptions of each other not very long after they took over Leverage Consulting with Sophie and Nate retiring and leaving the kids to fend for themselves.

“All the blood is rushin' to my head, and I'm telling _y'all_ this is a bad, bad idea,” Hardison announced. He felt the pull of gravity pressing his back against the back of the gray, soft, fuzzy, and spottily threadbare upholstery of the back seat of the red four-seater, four-wheel drive jeep that had been procured for this particular case. The fact that they had already went out of their way to outfit a different vehicle didn't bode well for backing out, and neither did the fact that the grade of the road seemed to go up and up into a sky full of trees, ferns, and other plants that he couldn't name or distinguish, one from the other. His arm was draped over the fourth seat, steadying himself but mostly bearing a little of his weight down against several, carefully secured cases that contained his lifeline – their only real, reliable connection to modern civilization back here in the sticks – the only equipment he had been able to free from Lucille (in her current incarnation) and bring with him. _'You guys are gonna thank me when it turns out there's a bomb in somebody's woodshed,'_ he had said. He had hoped he would be joking. Now he wasn't so sure.

“Would you stop complaining?” Eliot complained. His hand did something else with the gear shift. The wheels and engine of the little vehicle-that-could roared against poorly paved road that turned a little more into darkness that had nothing to do with the sun that was still somewhere overhead.

Hardison took a deep breath which he noisily let out. He glanced over at Parker. To her credit – or maybe against it – she seemed entirely unphased by the fact that they were possibly riding off into _Deliverance_ -land. Of course, she was blonde. And Eliot was country born-and-bred – not just Southern, _country_ , and Eliot had always insisted there was a difference. Maybe the two of them had less of a reason to have a gut feeling, to be worried. Or maybe it was just the fact that they were out of range of anyone with decent WiFi. There were two sides to everything, Hardison reassured himself.

Parker had her feet, shoes and all, braced up against the dash. Her hair was tied up in a high ponytail. She seemed entirely focused on the phone she had brought with her. Its flat screen was made bulkier by a case that protected its back and supplied it with more juice. Seeing Parker so calm and a piece of modern technology in the same field of view felt almost like art to Hardison. It was comforting.

“You still get signal up here?” he asked.

There was no answer.

Hardison sighed again, but this time it was a little more patient, less theatrically disgusted. He leaned forward, stretching to his full wingspan to keep his arm protectively over the equipment while he reached across to tap Parker on the shoulder. Right about the time he tapped her shoulder, feeling the jut of her collarbone as she turned, startled, they hit a bump that seemed to join with the apex of the mountain road. As the whole jeep bounced up and down, Parker seemed just a little surprised as she looked to the back seat at him. Hardison, on the other hand, felt like he'd been thrown back into the seat, winded again.

Parker blinked at him, expectant, like she hadn't noticed the minor earthquake.

“You still get signal up here?” he asked again, his diaphragm only a little bit strained.

“Yeah,” she said. It took a moment, but she smiled at him, a quiet kind of congratulations.

A little more satisfied with that than he had been with anything else in a while, Hardison smirked back at her. He nodded at the phone again.

“You playin' Flappy Bird?” he asked her.

“No,” Parker said, a little more intensely than most people would have. He could tell there was still some vitriol in her tone, even though the original app had been defunct for months.

“Candy Crush?” he pursued, keeping himself distracted and entertained. It wasn't exactly like you could play Punch Buggy or a license plate game out here. He tried to remember the last time they had seen another car that wasn't parked close to the road, diagonally across scraggly or high grass. He couldn't, really.

“No, I'm reviewing our clients' information before we get there,” she told him, in a more serious, collected tone.

He shaped up in line with it.

“I'm just picking at you,” he reminded her. He leaned forward again, this time straining against his shoulder belt. “Remind me again why we're all the way out here? Couldn't anything in this kind of small town just be settled by local police?”

“Pretty often, that's the problem,” Eliot chimed in, sounding almost sage when it had hardly seemed that he was listening.

Hardison raised his eyebrows, did a little side-to-side, thoughtful wobble of his head, then nodded that it was a pretty reasonable observation.

“I don't know about you guys,” he said, “but I think if we hear a banjo we turn around,” he said, still holding out on his former argument that just seemed to have been made for him again.

“Hardison, we help people when they need our help. That's what we're in this for, right?” Eliot said in a very impatient version of a pep-talk.

“Yeah, yeah. Fair enough, but I'm just telling you, I'm not about to be taxdermied out here in the Boonies.”

“Nothing's going to happen to you,” Parker said, as much decree as reassurance. “Or any of us,” she said. She smiled tightly as she looked across at the driver's seat. “That's why we have Eliot.”

“Yeah. Well. Least we've got one of that native huntsman to take care of us out here in the Enchanted Forest.”

“Watch it,” Eliot snarled, which wasn't really that much of a counter-argument.

At least now they were headed downhill.

\- - -

“This is it?” Eliot confirmed when they reached a section of road that was flatter and straighter and came upon a mailbox. Its door was hanging open, looking as if it could shut but that it would have a hard time staying that way.

Parker looked from her phone to the rusted iron and the reflective numbers that stood out, glaring and manufactured, against a backdrop of very old things.

“Yep,” she said to him with a nod.

“Not much of a driveway,” Hardison commented. He was right. There was a long, unpaved set of worn, fairly consistent tire tracks that had ground down into the grass until there was a dry, dusty path up to the house, further back from the road. “Now we can practice parking at random angles in the yard, too.”

“Remember that these people need our help,” Parker cautioned while she resisted rolling her eyes or smirking at him. She drew a breath of humid air that became more noticeable as the car slowed and came to a stop, twenty-five feet or so back from the front steps. For a moment, the air stilled and the breath of cool air that poured out of the vents just seemed like a fragile barrier between them and something warm and nearly-stagnant, like breath from a giant, feverish mouth. She wrinkled her nose at the thought, then sighed with relief when some wind blew in a cooler gust from the tree-line that ran along one edge of the property.

“Yeah, I know. Leverage Consulting professional technological badass as your service once we get inside. If they let you inside in this kind of place,” Hardison remarked, leaning forward to look at the thick, whitewashed posts that held up the overhanging roof over a porch that wrapped around a side and a half of the house.

Parker pulled the lever inside the door and pushed the door open with her elbow. Sliding from her seat belt, she got out onto the grass with a little bounce in her step. Her ankles complained a little. It wasn't like her to sit still for as long as they had been driving. She tested her flexibility a little, trying not to hop around in the front yard, leading by example, trying to be professional enough.

When Eliot and Hardison joined her, she let her gaze linger on Hardison's eyes. She had a funny, sad sort of feeling in her stomach. Some of the things he kept saying, joking, whining, complaining – they all touched on him being afraid on something, and she hated it. She frowned a little, then smiled against it. She reached out and down and took his hand in hers, tugging him along to lead him up the stairs first.

“Come on. Let's go ask the nice people if they have some air conditioning for your babies,” she said, indicating the machines that he had in carefully packed equipment cases in the car.

For a second, she wished she hadn't said anything because he looked wistfully through the back window. She pulled a little. It took a few minutes, but not much longer, to lead them both up onto the front porch. The steps were made of some kind of concrete. While she waited for an answer to the door, Parker looked down to check her feet and ankles again. The concrete was cracked in a few places, webbing out in tiny hairlines. Currently, the steps were gray. In spots, the paint looked ancient, dinged, and revealed sun-faded traces of colors the steps used to be.

It took a little longer than Parker expected for someone to answer the door. The woman who answered also didn't look like herself. Of course, Parker had never actually seen her before, but there was something unexpected, something that didn't fit between the way she moved and he way she looked. She moved in something only a little more agile and graceful than a shuffle. She seemed protective of her back, hand sometimes reaching around to brace against it, almost with every new direction of movement. In spite of this, Mrs. Baker led them through the creaking storm-door and the wooden one behind it.

The first breath of air Parker took was mercifully cool, but moving through the house was like moving through zones of sauna and refrigerator and hazy bits in between. In most rooms, ceiling fans whirled round and round until their individual blades were not entirely distinguishable or visible. Just the sight of it reminded Parker of being trapped, of being afraid of falling, of accidental dismemberment – even though these fans were much slower, made of reddish-stained and shiny wood, and nowhere near ventilation shafts.

The couch where she sat down between Hardison and Eliot was yellow with brown and orange stitching that formed floral designs that seemed tired of being flowers. She leaned forward to get some space, her arms feeling sticky here, even with the fan. Unlike the kitchen, the living room was hot enough that she was reminded of the sticky sheen of sweat on the back of her neck. She leaned forward, and the fan helped it to cool her, but only just. Then, sitting up straighter, she settled in for their consultation.

“Mrs. Baker,” she greeted, more formally than she had at the door, “I'd like you to tell us – myself and my colleagues – about what happened to your son,” she said.

“Oh, no. Dear,” Mrs. Baker said, catching on something in Parker's voice. Her hands folded together. Her dark hair hung down and seemed flat, without any shine in the yellowish light of the living room at sunset. “He's not dead. I didn't mean to give you that impression. He's not dead.”

Eliot frowned and glanced over at Parker.

“No, Mrs. Baker. She simply wants to know what the last information you have is about him.” Eliot sat back enough to look past Parker and her ponytail to glance over at Eliot. His arm stretched along the back of the sofa, behind Parker. In spite of a piney scent of deodorant and soap, she can smell a scent that is entirely Eliot and sweat. “And why you called us and not the local police,” he said.

He did listen to Hardison, whether he liked to admit that he did or not.

“That reminds me,” Hardison said, still antsier than Parker liked to see him. She looked up as she realized he was bouncing up from his seat before she could stop him. “You found us on the internet, right? Mrs. Baker, my area of expertise to this... outfit,” he said, gesturing down to Parker's head and past it to Eliot, “is the tech. And I've got some very... hot... unhappy computer equipment out in our car. You got a place for it?”

“Hardison,” Parker hissed, reaching up and tugging lightly at his forearm to draw him back down to the seat. Now wasn't the time, and Hardison didn't usually jump ahead alike that.

“... Oh. Oh, yes,” Mrs. Baker said. Just about the time Hardison had relented and taken his seat back by Parker, Mrs. Baker pointed a pale fingertip past his opposite shoulder. “My late husband's study is through there. I still use his old computer,” she explained, “sometimes. He taught me a few things... years ago, before he was sick.”

Parker nudged Hardison with her knee when she could practically feel his indignation about the fact that this woman was dependent on a dead man's computer from 'years' ago. It wasn't the time or the place, and she usually wasn't the most dignified or elegant one between them, when it came to social grace, but she could tell that something about being here put Hardison off. Maybe it was because he was almost normal – the most normal between the three of them.

“Yes, thank you. We'll move his things in after we've settled on whether or not we can help you... and your son,” Parker said, putting on a smile and a reassuring, sweet tone to make up for any lose bolts that she would have to tighten down later. “You were saying... about what happened?” she encouraged.

“He just disappeared, about a month ago. I've heard it on television, sometimes, that they won't take a person as missing until they've been gone for two days. But this wasn't like that,” Mrs. Baker told them. She paused, pressing her lips into a tight line as she looked at the coffee table that spanned the distance between her chair and the yellow couch.

“The police wouldn't file a missing persons report?” Eliot asked pointedly.

Mrs. Baker shook her head. Parker thought that meant that they wouldn't, but her brow furrowed downward a little. She couldn't exactly tell.

“When was the last time you heard anything? A month ago?”

“Not... exactly,” Mrs. Baker said. “There are rumors,” she said. “And sometimes... sometimes, I think he's not far off. I think he might be hiding somewhere local. I'm afraid he's in trouble... with the law and with someone who's not a friend to the law. I'm scared he's trapped somewhere,” she explained. Then she looked up, that look that Parker had learned to recognize, since she had taken over Leverage Consulting. Usually, it was the look that meant that this was where they were supposed to be. That look that said _'Help me. No one else will.'_

\- - -

“Come here, you look like you're burning up,” Parker said as Eliot set down the last of the heavy, hard plastic cases Hardison had brought with him. Hardison following behind with one the size of an average briefcase and an overfilled backpack might have added insult to injury if it weren't for the heaving, panting breath that offered him some satisfaction.

Not responding to Parker at first, Eliot called over his shoulder as he pushed through into the old, musty study that Mrs. Baker had directed them to for the tech set-up Hardison insisted he needed to work.

“Here?” he grunted back at Hardison.

“Yeah, man, that'll... that'll do...” he heard the response. He took it, letting the tension in his back lesson as he lowered the case without dropping it on anyone's toes. He could hear a hesitant splutter in Hardison's throat, but it was too late now. Besides, he could unload it and move it wherever he'd decided he actually wanted it anyway. Drawing a deep breath from air that was humid, even inside, Eliot straightened his back and cracked his neck.

“If I find out that's an X-Box,” he warned vaguely.

The dry, flat, withering look Hardison gave him was enough to make him crack a smile, too.

“I said come here,” Parker complained a little more insistently. When he no longer had something heavy in his arms, she seemed more emboldened to persist in her efforts.

“I'm fine, Parker,” he told her, shaking his head. Whatever her plan for fixing burning up was, it probably wasn't exactly conventional.

Still undeterred, Parker came closer to him and reached up and around him, sliding around him like she was trying to do some strange, slithering kind of dance around his body. He sighed. She never did have the greatest sense of personal space. He looked into Hardison's eyes, questioning and helpless.

Apparently, it was Hardison's turn to smirk at him.

“Just listen to the woman and it'll all go better for you. Trust me,” he said, knowing and pleased.

Eliot swallowed against the fact that they were doing that again, like it was more than just a joke and a kind of loyal affection that wasn't ever going away. That he could handle. That—His thoughts were suddenly interrupted by what seemed to be Parker _leaping_ up behind him.

“Piggyback?” he scoffed, glancing around at her. This was met with her fingertips jabbing into his cheek and 'coaxing' his face back around into a forward-facing position.

“Hold still,” she snapped. Her voice seemed muffled by something, and he hadn't got a good look at her face. Then, he heard the faint pluck of an elastic string, and he started to guess and understand. The next time she spoke, her voice wasn't muffled. “Just let me help you,” she said. Then, he felt the unceremonious tugging at his hair. Her fingers raked and clawed through it, sweat and tangles and all. She made quick work of the tangles, working them free without thought as to getting his hair wrapped around her fingers or pulling the occasional strand out.

“Ow!” he said, as if it were half for her benefit, to teach her that most people didn't really respond to having their hair pulled without warning very well. He swallowed and sighed, tilting his chin up and leaning his hair back. If he, or someone else, hadn't taught her by now, no one ever would.

He surrendered to Parker's intentions, though, letting her tie his hair back into a ponytail, up and off his neck. It did make some small difference. She knew that it would, and she knew he knew how to do it for himself, but she insisted on doing it anyway. In the brief moment of silence that elapsed, he caught another breath that seemed just a little cooler and more bearable.

“Thanks,” he mumbled as he was released to finally glance back at her. He looked from Parker to Hardison, around at their surroundings, and then nodded to himself. He didn't explain where he was going when he left the room, maybe because he didn't know. He just knew that he was satisfied that they weren't in any immediate danger.

“Everything going okay in there?” Mrs. Baker asked when he came around a corner. She was in her kitchen, quietly working, and he knew that she was probably going to offer them a late dinner. It was just what southern ladies did when they had guests, when they wanted to show gratitude, and when they didn't know what else to do. There was really nothing but time that was going to change that, and what came after it wasn't necessarily any better or freer from certain obligations and traditions that came with a different kind of life. He just hoped that she wasn't thanking them for nothing.

“Yeah. Just glad you had some kind of service out here,” Eliot said. “Hardison might have gone into withdrawal.”

Then, he wished he hadn't said it. He smiled easily, but he watched Mrs. Baker's eyes for any sign of recognition or regret, hoping he wouldn't find any. Mrs. Baker put on her best, tight smile too.

“Well, can't really get along without it these days, can you? My son showed me how the Amazon works, and sometimes it's a lot easier than driving around trying to find something you need. The Wal-Mart doesn't have as good a stock as it used to,” she said. Then she turned and went to tend a simmering pot on the stove.

“Some things change,” Eliot allowed, feeling a thickness in the air that wasn't just humidity. It felt like the tension at the back of the throat that came with bitten-back, hidden away grief.

“Indeed they do,” Mrs. Baker said sagely, her eyes seeming fixed on her cooking and not like to come back around. She hadn't supplied the matching bookend to his line, and that was enough to tell Eliot something he needed to know – about how realistic the woman's expectations were.

“I'm gonna go out and get some fresh air,” he told her. “I'll be right out there if you need me. Or if you hear anything falling to pieces in there,” he said, nodding back toward the closed office door.

There was a little mirth in Mrs. Baker's voice when she replied, though she didn't turn around.

“I'm sure they won't tear anything down that didn't need fixing in the first place,” she said. “It's nice, hearing young people be happy around here again.”

There was an implication of something, warm and cloying at once. Eliot didn't know whether to take offense or how, so he nodded against nothing.

“Yes, ma'am,” he said, then pushed his way out the storm-door. It fell closed behind him with a metallic rattle.

The wraparound porch was like dozens of places Eliot had been before and like none of them. Each of them was built a little differently, long before big construction firms started building houses out of commercial lumber and plastic siding with more garage than life inside. He liked places like this, but they were whispering reminders of places he couldn't go back to, had never really been because the man who could have been in them had walked away and changed – for better and worse, but mostly for worse.

His feet moved along and he could feel the change from concrete steps and landing to wooden floorboards beneath. Wood was softer and it creaked a little against his weight. He walked along into the depth of the porch, away from the quickest way down into the dew-dampened grass. His hands pushed down into the pockets of his jeans. He looked around, smelling the thick perfume of humid, outdoor air. Somehow, it was more alive than the air inside the house – and cooler right now, actually.

\- - -

“I'm guessing the blinky words are a good thing?” Parker asked, smiling but then pressing her lips into a tight line to hide it.

Hardison came back from wrestling with the window because he was trying not to die, and he thought it would be good for the computers as he set up a separate fan near the fresh air.

“Yes,” he said, knowingly as he touched the crown of her head and crouched down beside her. In spite of Eliot's smart-ass remarks, he had not brought any game consoles with him. Nevertheless, sitting down on the floor to use his set-up reminded him of younger years, only Parker mostly only looked at him like he was weird in a good way, so that was a step-up. “Do you pretend you don't know anything about computers still because you're worried I'll feel useless without being the IT Department around here?” he asked, looking over at her.

She stopped trying not to grin.

“Yes,” she said. Then she leaned in and gave him a sweet, soft kiss to his mouth that didn't linger. It was too hot for that. He wondered how people in this part of the South ever had babies. He guessed all of them were born in September.

A bluish tint lit up against both their faces as the computer monitor came a little more to life, running through its booting process. He didn't take his eyes off Parker while he waited.

“You trust this woman?”

“Yeah, I think so. Don't you?”

“I mean, yeah, she seems like sweet, nice older lady. Not super-old. But... I don't know. This place gives me the creeps a little bit.” Then he nodded at the computer as he unlocked it through the process that made him feel only barely-safe. “Not only that, but if my machines make it out of here without getting rusted...” he said, trailing off.

“Well that's why you have me,” Parker volunteered.

“Really? You can connect to the internet?” Hardison glanced at her. “Wouldn't be surprised, but if you've been hiding that this whole time...”

“No, silly,” Parker chided. “I can't 'connect to the internet.' I just thought that if you made me a robot to help me that I could help you in place of a robot.”

“That sounds filthy, you know that?” Hardison asked, raising his eyebrows.

Parker's ticked down in response as she grimaced, mostly in confusion at first and then with a little further disgust.

“What? Ew,” she said, whether or not she meant it as she caught on. She punched him – with more force than she used to, thanks to Eliot – in the arm.

“Thanks, Eliot,” Hardison decided to say out loud through a stifled grunt. He was quiet for a moment more, not looking up from the screen as he typed in a few commands and opened up a few things, scanning the area for unusual signals. There wasn't another house for at least a mile, so any unexpected signals would, indeed, be pretty damn unusual. “Alright,” he said after he was reasonably satisfied. “I think we're in business.”

Parker nodded her approval then started to pull herself lithely up to her feet. She looked left and right.

“Where'd Eliot go?” she asked.

“Probably went to pee outdoors or something. Commune with nature,” Hardison said flatly, but he was scrambling his way up off the floor, too.

\- - -

“Oh, man, Mrs. Baker,” Hardison commented when they emerged from the office, hanging behind Parker a little bit. “I hope you didn't go to a lot of trouble. Or if you did that you'll holler if you need help. I mean, I'd say we could take care of ourselves and ride out to a Taco Bell, but the last one I saw of those was...”

“Exit 63,” Mrs. Baker said. Parker noticed that she glanced around and smiled. Her teeth looked perfect, and for a split-second, Parker wondered if they were dentures or not. She pressed her lips tightly together, remembering some of what Sophie had taught her. She knew immediately that she wasn't going to ask. “And no, it's no trouble. Everyone's gotta eat,” she said. “But it'll be just a little while, yet, then you might let the kitchen cool off. Your friend went outside.”

“Thanks!” Parker called, remembering some of her instruction in social graces as she practically charged the door, engaged its little latch, and went outside. She practically skipped down the steps and into the grass. She felt like it itched at her skin, anywhere it even thought about touching, but then as she waded further out there was a little bite of something almost cold in the dark, carpet-y yard. “Eliot!” she called when she looked left and right along the tree line.

“Would you stop screaming?” Eliot's voice came from behind and above her, making her start. He was still up on the porch, having appeared from around the corner. He made a broad, inward sweeping gesture with his arm, as if he were trying to herd her back up onto the porch.

She smirked and glowered at him at once as she started back up the steps about the time Hardison came out in a normal pace.

“Not like I'm bothering the neighbors,” she said.

“Maybe Eliot knows something we don't know,” Hardison said, having missed a few seconds but chiming into the conversation anyway. “Maybe he's hiding something that only country-folk know. Trackers and cowboys or something,” he said.

“Cowboys are out west, you idiot,” Eliot said.

“Be nice,” Parker ordered as she walked past Eliot to see where he'd been out of her line of sight. “Oh! A porch swing,” she said. Then she went for the center of it. “Come on, swing with me,” she said. It seemed almost like a carnival attraction to her, only older, more like somewhere they might have been a home if she hadn't learned to make a home out of a lack of visibility, being fast, and the smell of fresh, non-sequential bills.

Hardison settled down on her right. Eliot took up his place at her left. She pushed a little with her feet and the three of them kicked off in something that was almost like synchronicity, starting a gentle sway. It was still warm, even in the early, deepening dark, but the swing and the breeze that occasionally blew up from trees that seemed to have distant water behind them made it a little more bearable.

A few minutes later, sweat started to do its job and the breezes felt almost cold. Then, she was glad that she had their warmth to her left and her right. She squirmed a little between them. She leaned her head back, feeling the elegant, crafted curve of the porch swing. She looked up at hanging, dry and sickly potted plant, ceiling, and twinkling stars that became visible each time they swung far enough back.

\- - -

“I mean it, though,” Hardison said, breaking a comfortable, sleepy silence that made it possible for them to hear Mrs. Baker inside, getting a head start on her dishes and turning up the ceiling fan to clear away some of the cooking heat.

Eliot looked over at him, lulled into patience, past Parker's head and dangling ponytail.

“Mean what?” he asked.

“You seem like you got spooked in there,” Hardison replied. “Wanted out?” he asked. His eyes were bright when he looked at Eliot, patiently curious, and this kind of peace between them was when Eliot knew exactly what he was _still doing_ here. Wherever here happened to be.

“Not really,” Eliot said with a little noncommittal half-shrug. “Just figured you didn't need me for that part.”

“But you're doing the brooding, bluesy thing,” Hardison pointed out. Parker lolled her head over onto his shoulder, nuzzling a little, though she still seemed to be awake. She looked safe, comfortable, and that was another reason.

“What?” Eliot asked, chuckling at the description in spite of himself.

“You know. _Bwang-doo-be-doo-be-doo,_ ” Hardison said, or uttered, the last part of it a sing-song imitation of some monstrous cousin of a banjo or guitar.

Eliot rolled his eyes, feeling the edge of his patience but then breathing it out into the precious few moments of something like peace. He looked out along to the edge of the property, scanning his eyes along as he did every so often. The river felt like an exposed vein – some kind of vulnerability. Someone who knew what they were doing could approach silently from there the way they couldn't with a car or other vehicle.

“It's just... this might be a case for us,” he said. He glanced down at Parker, meeting her eyes. He lifted one hand in a brief gesture of peace. “No offense,” he said. “I'm here for it if we can help this woman,” he said, dialing down his volume into an intimate range so that Mrs. Baker wouldn't overhear anything that might hurt her. “I just don't know if we can.”

“Why not?” Parker asked, the words seeming to bounce softly off her tongue.

“Because places like this... sometimes they just fall apart. It's like they don't belong in the world anymore, and they know it,” he tried to explain.

“Yeah, we know. Big box stores. Strip malls. Taking down all the Mom's and Pop's. But we deal with that all the time. Don't have to just be country for that,” Hardison suggested, seemingly trying to reassure him.

“That's not all it is,” Eliot said, though he nodded to give Hardison some acknowledgment as he peered out into the green-blue-blackness beyond the faint, yellow glow from the porch lights.

“What do you think it is?” Hardison asked.

Eliot regarded them both with a longer look before he looked off again, this time more at the floorboards. He answered them almost in a cough.

“Meth or something, probably.”

Parker shook her head, apparently having a disagreement she didn't immediately voice.

Hardison leapt in to fill the void.

“Meth? Or drugs or something?” he asked, obviously leading somewhere.

Eliot made a hushing sound, frowned, and then nodded.

“... Right. My guess? If it's drugs, it's zombies.”

“What?” Parker asked, picking up her head and rounding on him. Her ponytail batted at Eliot's neck.

“Don't be stupid and make light of somebody's... problems,” Eliot said in a hiss, gesturing toward the house.

“Hey, man, I'm sorry. I'm not. I'm just thinking... we've been at this for a long time and never really run into anything like that. And don't start. I _know_ you believe in aliens. So who's to say there's not gonna be zombies.” Then, Hardison was looking down into Parker's eyes, gesturing with a hand. “You know, patient zero, that kind of thing? What better place than out in the Boonies to—”

Eliot cleared his throat in an insistent reprimand.

“Sorry,” Hardison grumbled, not very convincingly, but he laid off.

Parker seemed satisfied and resumed her previous position of looking up skyward between them.

“Well. If I've gotta survive the zombie apocalypse, I know I want it to be with you,” she said. She didn't say which one of them she meant. She didn't have to. She leaned her head against Hardison's shoulder. Then a few seconds later, there was a bustle of movement as she kicked and peeled off her shoes and socks. Then she kicked them a little, presumably to dry them of some of the sweat. Then, she drew them up and neatly tucked her legs up, draping them across Eliot's lap.

“I see how it is,” Eliot said. “Got to keep me around to put up with the gross stuff,” he said, looking down at the steady, elegant arch of her feet. He poked one of them against its bottom and absorbed the contact as she kicked at him weakly. She didn't have to say a thing.

 


End file.
